Pacific women smoking at rates as high as men

One of the most comprehensive studies ever conducted has shown that women in Pacific nations are smoking in very high numbers with rates as high as men.

The study has tracked changes in 187 countries for more than 30 years and shows countries in the Pacific and Asia have some of the worst smoking rates in the world.

It is being published in this month's Journal of the American Medical Association and shows that Indonesia, Timor Leste, Papua New Guinea, Tonga and Kiribati have extremely high rates of smoking.

One of the study's authors, Dr Alan Lopez from Melbourne University's School of Population and Global Health, has told Pacific Beat that the health toll of smoking in the Pacific and Asia is significant and it will escalate in the next 10 or 20 years as current smokers start to die prematurely.

He says that in countries like Tonga, Papua New Guinea and Kiribati, the smoking rates for men are above 50 per cent and they are very high for females as well.

"That is unusual. What we tend to see in the developing countries in the region here, say in Asia, is comparatively high and disturbingly high in fact, prevalence for males, around 40 to 50 per cent but much lower prevalence for females," Dr Lopez said.

"We don't tend to see that in the Pacific where women are smoking almost as much as men."

He says the male/female differential is well-established and in countries like Australia in the first half of the 20th century, it was much more common for men to smoke presumably because of social norms.

"What we are seeing in many of the developing countries of the region is that that social taboo about female smoking in most countries, more or less, has not been lifted and is still there," Dr Lopez said.

"So you have only two or three per cent of women smoking in Indonesia, for example, whereas you have 55 per cent of men smoking.

"Now in the Pacific, that social taboo does not seem to be nearly as strong."

One of the major findings of the survey is that there has not been significant reduction in smoking in any country in the Pacific or Asia.

"(It) is absolutely alarming (that) in countries like Australia, United States, United Kingdom, much of Europe, particularly northern Europe, we have seen fabulous commitment, bold commitment to tobacco control (and) bold public policy by governments, persistent in the face of severe attacks by the tobacco industry," Dr Lopez said.

"We don't see that, near as much in countries in Asia, although to their credit, countries like China are now beginning to show the benefits of persistent tobacco control programs, particularly for males."

Dr Lopez says there are a number of established public policy methods to reduce smoking such as raising the price by increasing taxes on tobacco.

"Raising the price will restrict access greatly. It will lead to a massive drop in consumption and it has done so in virtually every country where it has been tried," he said.

"But that is not all. You can ban advertising and promotion so you don't see the Marlboro Man the moment you get off the plane in Jakarta, on a billboard somewhere. You can ban advertising in television and in newspapers.

"Any form of public promotion of a substance that will kill one in two of its regular users has got to be good public health practice and countries around the region ought to be adopting it rigorously."